Replicate Discourse Data from PowerShell

The CData ODBC Driver for Discourse enables out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft's built-in support for ODBC. The ODBC driver instantly integrates connectivity to the real Discourse data with PowerShell.

You can use the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC built into PowerShell to quickly automate integration tasks like replicating Discourse data to other databases. This article shows how to replicate Discourse data to SQL Server in 5 lines of code.

You can also write PowerShell code to download Discourse data. See the examples below.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Discourse

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

The Discourse API uses API Key authentication.

Using API Key Authentication

Discourse requires API Key and Username for authentication. API Keys are generated in the Discourse Admin panel under the API section. You can create user-specific API keys or all-users API keys. Once you have obtained the API Key, set it along with the Domain and Username in the ProfileSettings connection property.

Example Connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;

Connect to Discourse

The code below shows how to use the DSN to initialize the connection to Discourse data in PowerShell:

$conn = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection
$conn.ConnectionString = "DSN=CData API Source x64"

Back Up Discourse Data to SQL Server

After you enable caching, you can use the code below to replicate data to SQL Server.

Set the following connection properties to configure the caching database:

• CacheProvider: The name of the ADO.NET provider. This can be found in the Machine.config for your version of .NET. For example, to configure SQL Server, enter System.Data.SqlClient.

• CacheConnection: The connection string of properties required to connect to the database. Below is an example for SQL Server:

  Server=localhost;Database=RSB;User Id=sqltest;Password=sqltest;

The SQL query in the example can be used to refresh the entire cached table, including its schema. Any already existing cache is deleted.

$conn.Open()
# Create and execute the SQL Query
$SQL = "CACHE DROP EXISTING SELECT * FROM " + $Backups
$cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand($sql,$conn)
$count = $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
$conn.Close()

The driver gives you complete control over the caching functionality. See the help documentation for more caching commands and usage examples. See the help documentation for steps to replicate to other databases.

Other Operations

To retrieve Discourse data in PowerShell, call the Fill method of the OdbcDataAdapter method. To execute data manipulation commands, initialize the OdbcCommand object and then call ExecuteNonQuery. Below are some more examples commands to Discourse through the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC:

Retrieve Discourse Data

$sql="SELECT , from Backups"
 
$da= New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcDataAdapter($sql, $conn)
$dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable
$da.Fill($dt) 
 
$dt.Rows | foreach {
 $dt.Columns | foreach ($col in dt{
 Write-Host $1[$_]
 }
}